By the Numbers: 70 recipes from the meticulously authentic Pok Pok Thai restaurants and bars in Portland, Oregon, and New York City.

Biggest Revelation: As Ricker writes, "Cooking [Thai] food is relatively straightforward. The hardest part is finding the ingredients." The sheer number of esoteric items these recipes call for—water spinach, fresh galangal, dried shrimp—means that with the exception of jasmine rice and steamed fish, only the most hyper-motivated American cooks can make great Thai food at home. But even though Ricker calls himself a "dictator" about substitutions, he's not totally inflexible. He reveals that Mexican culantro (available in most Latin markets) is the same thing as the rare sawtooth herb, that Key limes are quite similar to Thai limes and that Mexican puya chiles can stand in for dried Thai chiles.

Smart Tip: Coconut milk and cream packaged in cardboard Tetra Paks are of far higher quality than the canned variety.

By the Numbers: More than 100 of the restaurant's old-Italian-meets-neo-Brooklyn recipes, including the famed pizza, hearty fresh pastas and chef Carlo Mirarchi's more formal and delicate plated dishes.

Best Lessons: All the fascinating vegetable dishes that use seasonal farmers' market exotica like sucrine, celtuce, black radish and hyssop.

Most Challenging Dish: A salad that isn't technically hard, but combines three especially unusual ingredients: miner's lettuce (a crunchy, mild green), bottarga (cured fish roe) and a vinaigrette made from sorrel—which requires a juicer to make.

Most Accessible Dish: An ultra-smoky split pea soup using Benton's bacon and a bottle of Miller High Life beer.—Michael Endelman